Christmas Tree- Epic fail

Last year (and every year since 2001) I have put up the same small artificial tree. I bought it when I was in college and we never thought to upgrade until last year when all our ornaments would not fit on it. You can see our old tree here.
So, about 3 weeks ago I set out to find a new artificial tree that was not too expensive. I heard Menards had great ones so I went there. I heard right. They had tons to choose from and the price range was from $59-$269 for 6 and 7 foot trees. They all came in boxes so you really didn't know what you were getting yourself into, but I went for the $80, 7 foot one.
Then I needed to shop for lights. The green cord box of 250 lights was $30 and the white cord box of 200 was $9.99. I grabbed the white cord ones to do it on the cheap, not realizing that I would now have white cords all around my tree!
When I got home and opened the box, my new tree came in 100 plus pieces! Okay, I can do this, I'm a carpenter's daughter. After the first hour went by and my hands were bruised and only half the tree was done I came to this realization: A Christmas tree is not something you should cut $$ corners on. I then grabbed me a hammer and got the rest of the tree together in less then an hour.
Sadly this tree will not ever break back down. I will be dragging this bad boy out to my corner at the end of the season (and probably buy a nice one on discount at that time).
Now time for the lights. To be honest, it looks nice when the lights are on. When the lights are off/pictures are taken of it, it looks awful!
At the end of the day I don't hate it enough to redo it for this year. It's a lesson learned and my tree will be the best next year! ;) Here's what I'm left with for this one: